British dance-pop sensation Ellie Goulding is the sort of girl you would pick to have a fun night out on the town with.

She dresses like a cool rave-head, has smooth bantering skills and occasionally busts out crazed dance moves that rapper MC Hammer would approve of.

On June 13, she was the life of the party as she performed to 4,500 fans at the Star Theatre.

The 27-year-old came on strong, kicking off her 90-minute long set with a string of catchy, high-energy hits that included Figure 8, Ritual, and Goodness Gracious.

Goulding, dressed in a sleeveless printed white crop top and black pants that showed off her athletic physique, sang in her signature soprano warble, running up and down the stage and occasionally thumping away at the set of drums in dramatic fashion.

She swayed her hips from left to right to the beat, and every now and then, she exuded a sultry cool, teasing her audience with belly-dancing moves that would send her fans screaming for more.

"Put your hands up if you're really with me this evening," she called out to the audience, made up of mostly teenage fangirls. They responded with ear-deafening screams, hands in the air.

Although most of her songs kept to their original recorded versions, she changed things up every now and then by throwing in more vocal runs, and doing acoustic versions of songs such as Guns And Horses and Beating Hearts. These stripped down renditions allowed her to better convey the emotion behind these songs to her audience.

She ignited the crowd with Salt Skin, a song off her debut album Lights (2011), that was given a more upbeat spin by sampling the chorus off British-Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A's famed hit Bad Girls.

The Straits Times

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